THUGLIT Issue Three

by Ed Kurtz

  Little Frank wanted to know what about him, and Junior kept on snapping, now at the barback who made a face.

  “He’s here, is what about him. Just heard the other day.”

  “What do you mean, here?” Gil asked. It was the most he’d said in a while.

  “Here means here, as in here in town. Runs a goddamn pizza parlor, if you can believe that. Guy like that, gook who cuts people’s throats open and now he slings pies across I-5 at Grant Plaza.”

  I thought about the picture some more, squinted and tried to see it in my mind. It wasn’t hard, I’d seen it plenty of times. It still showed up on the teevee now and then, Duong’s face solid as a rock and the other guy looking like he couldn’t even believe what was happening to him.

  “Wait,” Little Frank put in. “It was a VC he put down, wasn’t it? I mean, he was one of our guys.”

  “He ain’t seen the picture,” Gil said, jabbing a thumb at Frank.

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “They wouldn’t even let him command anymore after that,” Jackson said. “And they wouldn’t take him when they evacuated Saigon, either. That son of a bitch was bad news and the Vietnamese knew it. Everybody knew it.”

  “And now he’s here,” Junior said, satisfied.

  “Van-fucking-Duong,” Jackson grumbled. For a few minutes we all drank in silence, like we’d just found out somebody died. Nobody said a word until Gil spoke up, his voice suddenly loud and authoritative.

  “Let’s go pay him a visit, then,” he said.

  *****

  Junior was the least drunk of us, so he drove. He had a brown Dodge van. Gil sat in the passenger seat next to him with me and Jackson in the back. Little Frank bowed out. He said he had to get home to his wife, which was probably true, but I could see he wanted no part of what we were up to.

  The west side of I-5 was a good deal more upscale than our stomping grounds. The cars were all newer, nicer. The houses were a lot bigger, the yards well-kept, and there were twice as many shopping centers. People with money needed places to spend it. In our part of the world, we had pawn shops and package stores. I hadn’t even been this far west since the last time I drove a truck for a living, when Ford was still in office. I felt like we’d just snuck through a demilitarized zone to enemy territory.

  Gil lighted a Merit and got to grumbling about the war and bleeding heart liberals and all the kids who got torn to pieces while Van Duong lived high on the hog—or at least as high as selling pepperoni slices to the upper crust could get a guy. He wondered aloud if Duong would give him—a real live unemployed American—a job, and then answered his own question with the inevitable “probably not.”

  “Probably he’s got five kids and a dozen cousins all live in the same house with him, that’s who runs the parlor. I bet between ‘em they killed a hundred GIs.”

  I half-expected Frank to pipe up again, remind Gil that Duong wasn’t North Vietnamese, never was, but I’d forgotten he bounced first chance he got. Smart boy.

  Grant Plaza was a sprawling strip center with sandstone facades. Its parking lot was weirdly clean, devoid of trash and oil stains. I supposed rich people’s gaskets didn’t leak like everyone’s back in the neighborhood did. The pizza joint was nestled between a dry cleaner’s and a fancy boutique bookstore. It was called Happy’s Pizza, presumably because they figured on making people think their pizza would induce happiness, and also on account of General Van Duong’s Pizza being a crummy name for a restaurant. Junior parked right up front, but Jackson told him he better park in the back, by the loading docks. He did, and we went all the way around to the front on foot from there. A little brass bell tinkled when we went through the door.

  Just four inebriated rednecks from the other side of the tracks looking for some pizza pie, like we couldn’t get any in our own neighborhood.

  The kid behind the counter wasn’t Vietnamese. He wasn’t even Asian—just a regular whitebread kid working a summer gig, oblivious to how stupid he looked in that red and yellow uniform with the tomato sauce spattered all over the front like a goddamn crime scene. He was half-asleep when the four of us piled into the place, but he shot up straight at the sound of the bell and said “good evening” in a squeaky voice. His nametag identified him as “Jake.”

  Jackson pointed a gnarled forefinger at the nametag and squinted at it. “Hi, Jake.”

  He had rolled his sleeves up to show off the USMC tattoo on his right forearm. Jake didn’t notice it. The war probably ended when he was still in diapers.

  Jackson said, “Your boss in, Jake?”

  “Is there something I can help you with, sir?” Squeak, squeak.

  Junior poked Jackson on the arm. “Hey man, let’s get something to eat first,” he said.

  Jackson sighed and peered at the menu laminated right onto the counter. I shook my head, feeling sort of stupid, and slipped away to the men’s room. It was probably the cleanest public pisser I’d ever seen, though that wasn’t saying much. I sidled up to the urinal and drew a bead on some graffiti scrawled on the tiled wall right in front of my face. Big blocky letters done in permanent marker: WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE, MOTHERFUCKER. I must have gone on looking at it for another five minutes after I was done pissing. Was this as far as they went, whoever scribbled this vague threat? Did they eat Duong’s food first? And for Christ’s sake; so what if you know who he is? What difference did it make?

  Probably I could’ve gone on like that, staring at the graffiti with my dick still in my hand, but someone started shouting in the restaurant and my stomach did a cartwheel. Next thing, Gil was shouting for me—“Blue! Blue, get out here, buddy!”

  I zipped my fly and got out there. I didn’t even have time to wash my hands.

  Junior was pacing the small dining area, weaving through the Formica-topped tables with his hands on his hips. That was the first thing I noticed. After that, the rest of it all came into focus. The kid, Jake, was on the floor in front of the counter. His nose was smashed flat and his whole face looked like one of those ink blot pictures, except red. Jackson was on his knees, holding the kid down, muttering threats to the tune of don’t move, don’t get up, it doesn’t have to get any worse than this. It made for a strange sight, all that blood on his face and all that tomato sauce on his stupid Happy’s Pizza shirt.

  Behind the counter, Gil—my good buddy Gil—had a small man bent over next to the cash register, looking for all the world like he was about to indulge in some maximum security romance. The man was hollering in a combination of accented English and what had to be Vietnamese. Gil was hollering back, telling him to shut his mouth and twisting his arm up behind his back. His lips were flecked with foamy spit and blue veins stood out at his temples like rubber bands. The Asian man was sweating badly, but he looked to me more angry than afraid; he ran off some more Vietnamese and Jackson stood up to slap him hard across the cheek.

  I thought, we know who are you are, motherfucker, except that we didn’t. Not really.

  Jackson brandished his tattoo at the old guy, Semper Fi.

  Junior collapsed into one of the two booths by the window, just shaking his head and staring at his own hands. I guessed he’d been the one to punch the kid, but for now all the violence in the room was pouring out of Jackson and Gil. They were enraged, those two guys, madder than I’d ever seen either of them before. You would have thought old Van Duong killed their mamas the way they bellowed and spat and smacked the man around. I never went to war with my bullshit peacenik vibe, but I imagined this sort of thing happened every day in country. Only trouble was, we were in a pizza parlor in Grant Plaza, not Da Nang or My Lai or Hamburger-fucking-Hill.

  The kid on the floor let out a pitiful moan and Jackson drove a boot into his ribs. Junior was out of the booth then, waving his hands and giving Jackson hell, but I was still too stunned to say or do anything. It wasn’t moral outrage; everything had just gone down so fast I didn’t know what to do.

  Finally Gil slammed Duong’s face into the c
ounter and roared, “Will you cretins shut the hell up? We got what we came for—let’s head back to the neighborhood.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief to hear that. Sorry as I was for poor Jake and his flattened schnozz, I figured Duong got what was coming to him and it really wasn’t all that bad. He was scared and angry, got slapped a bit and his shoulder probably dislocated, but in the final analysis he’d go on slinging pies with the best of them with everything intact. And a band of pissed-off drunks from the Eastside got it out their system, right? Sometimes that’s all a man needs to do, get it out of his system. Gil had told us a man could only take so much, but he could take a lot up to then. Van Duong had taken his, and I was ready to get back home. All of us were.

  But things got kind of messy at that point. Gil hauled Duong up, wrapped an arm around his neck and guided him back through the kitchen. Jackson kicked Jake again—I could hear a rib crack this time—and trotted along after them. That left me and Junior, and we gave each other looks that said it all, but mostly just what the hell is going on? I didn’t need to ask, though. I already knew damn well what was going on: we were taking the old General back with us, back to the neighborhood.

  *****

  I don’t know how many people remember that old song from White Christmas, the one about what you do with a General when he stops being a General, but Gil sure as shit did, because he was singing it most of the way back to our corner of town. It started to drive me nuts the fourth or fifth time in a row, but Jackson was grinning like the cat who caught the canary and even sang along a little his own self. As for Junior and me, we just sat on opposite sides of the back bench seat, looking out our respective windows and trying to avoid eye contact with Duong, who Gil was sitting on, right in front of us. Every so often he’d pinch the old guy’s cheek and raise his voice even louder and higher, but to his credit Duong stayed stock-still and dead silent and just took it.

  It was like he was a POW, thirteen years too late.

  Whatever kind of drunk we’d managed to get to this point was worn off by then, so Jackson swung through a package store and came out with a couple of fifths, one gin and the other rye, which made the rounds in the van all the way back to Gil’s place. Even Duong got a belt from the gin, whether he wanted it or not, and from the looks of it he didn’t.

  I was already buzzing hard when the engine coughed and died and Gil dragged our prisoner out onto the icy sidewalk in front of his row house. It was a two-level job with crumbling shingles on top, just like the four to the left of it and the three to the right. The screen door was full of holes and the cement steps leading up to it were in bad need of repair. Gil, of course, couldn’t float it. Repairs cost money, and even when he was working he was already trudging through the red. The whole damn place was about to cave in all around him, but it was home, sweet home and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  Gil unlocked the door and held it open for us after he shoved Duong into his living room. I had another belt from the rye on my way in and shut the door behind me. Someone switched the lamp on and I couldn’t help but notice he’d really let the place go to hell. Gil wasn’t always the tidiest guy you ever knew, but the room was cluttered with empty beer cans and liquor bottles, Chinese takeaway boxes and overfilled ashtrays. There was dirty laundry draped over chairbacks and the faint reek of cat piss in the air, all ammonia-like, which stung my nostrils. Even when Wanda left, Gil hadn’t gotten this bad. I supposed losing his livelihood was the last straw. Only so much a man could take…

  Duong backed up against the fireplace and assumed a mean glare. His little chest rose and fell like a guy who knew he was in for some shit, which he was. For a few seconds we all just looked at each other, dumber than a bunch of pigs trying to hump a football. Gil fired up a smoke then and got up in Duong’s face.

  “You speaky English?”

  Duong said, “Fuck. You.” Just like that, with the periods for emphasis and all.

  Gil looked like he was going to drop the guy, but instead he laughed. I couldn’t see what was so funny about it, but he just cracked up like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Jackson and Junior laughed, too, but Junior didn’t seem like he was anywhere near as amused as the other two. He was just along for the ride.

  I bummed a smoke from Gil’s pack and smoked it between hits from the bottle in my other hand. Gil’s free hand closed to a fist, which he sank into Duong’s stomach. Duong moaned and bent in half, clutching his gut and rocking side to side. Gil always was a good hitter, won tons of fights when we were kids. For a short while he started hanging around the boxing club, entertaining some fantasy about becoming the next Marciano or something. It didn’t take, but he kept on fighting all the same.

  “You know any nice words, Ho Chi Minh?” he barked, showing his teeth. This time, Duong didn’t say anything. In the dim light of Gil’s living room he looked a lot older than he had back at the pizza parlor.

  “What’ve you got to eat?” Jackson asked, gesturing with his chin to the kitchen.

  “Forget that,” Gil said. “Let’s go down in the basement.”

  With that, he grabbed a handful of Duong’s shirt and yanked him across the room, toward the basement door that needed a paint job.

  Jackson moped, said, “We ought to’ve got some pizza when we had the chance.”

  “Maybe the General will make us one,” Junior joked, leading the way down the steps. “What d’you reckon Commie pizza tastes like, anyhow?”

  “Extra red peppers,” Jackson said, chortling.

  Duong muttered, “No communist,” but nobody was listening.

  Once again, I was the last one through the door. Once again, I shut it behind me.

  Gil’s basement was all one big room with paneled walls and exposed ducts in the ceiling. He had a few old beer signs tacked up, rusty old crap they let him have from the bar when they were just going to throw them out anyway, and some ratty corduroy-upholstered furniture clustered around an old color teevee on a milk crate. Junior switched the television on, but Gil yelled at him to turn it back off.

  “I need your full, undivided attention, boys,” he said in a near-perfect imitation of our junior high history teacher, Mr. Hansen. Even after all these years we still clowned on that jagoff. “We’ve got us some work to do.”

  *****

  Sometime past midnight, Van Duong started to work his tongue around inside his mouth. He was wrapped up in a duct-tape cocoon and looking right at me. At first, I was surprised, even a little offended. After all, I was the only guy there hadn’t actually done anything. Then I got it.

  He winced a little, then spit on the floor. A small, round wad of bloody mucus just sat there on the cracked cement, and in the middle of it was part of a broken tooth. The other guys—Jackson, Junior, and Gil—had been giving him the business for a while by then, at least an hour. Gil favored the face shots, like always. His own hands were all cut up and bleeding from all the punches he’d driven into the old General’s face, but he’d heal up. Duong, on the other hand, was losing teeth pretty fast.

  A long, sticky red rope of spit swung from his bottom lip. He was still looking at me. I turned my head. I couldn’t stand it the way he stared.

  We’d killed off the fifths and were working on a case of room temperature Schlitz when Duong uttered the first word he’d said since Gil taped him up.

  “Water.”

  Gil belched and said, “What’s that? Speak up, Charlie Chan.”

  “Water,” Duong repeated. “Please.”

  “Hey Jackson,” Gil called out. “Ain’t there water in beer?”

  “Shhhhure,” Jackson slurred. He was laid out on the couch, the stuffing poking out at him through a dozen holes. “Beer’s got water in it. That’s how come it’s wet.”

  A bunch of geniuses, us.

  So Gil dumped the rest of his beer on Duong’s head. Duong thrashed, trying in vain to avoid most of the pour, but he got doused in it.

  He shook his head like
a rain-soaked dog and bawled, “Why you doing this to me? Why you doing this to me?”

  Gil fell out chuckling so hard he grasped his belly. He squinted his eyes and stuck his front teeth out and did this little dance, prancing around the basement. Drunk as I was, that was when it occurred to me that Gil didn’t give a rat’s ass what Duong did or didn’t do in Vietnam. Probably the only guy with a bug up his ass about that was Jackson, and Jackson passed out halfway through Duong’s beer-shower. Besides good old Gil, that left just Junior and me. I glanced over at Junior, and he was curled up in the chair across from Jackson, thumbing through a crumpled Penthouse with half-lidded eyes.

  And Duong, he was squeezing his eyes shut and drooling blood, his cheek pressed hard against the cold floor. His face was purple in places and almost black in others, and I shuddered to think was the rest of him was like under all that silver tape. Hell, after the beating that kid took back at Happy’s Pizza, and him with nothing to do with any of this…

  “Gil,” I blurted, my mouth working on its own with no help from me, “don’t you think that kid would’ve called the cops by now?”

  “What kid?”

  “The kid, at the pizza parlor.”

  “Ohhh,” he cooed. “You mean Jake.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Jake. So what about it?”

  “So what about it, man? That kid don’t know any of us from Adam.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So what?”

  “So maybe the cops are out looking to find him. Duong, I mean.”

  “Who, him?” Gil nudged Duong hard with the toe of his boot. “What the hell for? Guy like this? Fuckin’ slashes a guy’s neck and laughs about it?”

  “I don’t think he laughed, Gil.”

  “You ever see that film of it, Blue? You ever really watch what this son of a bitch gook did to those guys?”

  “Jesus, Gil—the guy he killed was a gook, too.”

  He opened his mouth to retort, but it must have struck him a bit late because he burst out laughing all over again. “That’s good!” he shouted, shaking from his conk to his shoes. “That’s real good, Blue.”